It’s my mama’s birthday today. I got to spend almost an entire week with her this holiday, which was very very nice. Now I get to watch the husband play Brütal Legend, Jack Black’s metalhead video game. Not that it isn’t awesome, but it never would have been on if my parents were still here.

With all that is going on in the world, I wish I could say that I was not spending so much of my time listening to old Robbie Williams albums. I don’t want to lie to you, though. Back when Robbie was trying to break into the US music scene, (and when they still played videos on Mtv), I saw his video for “Millenium.” It was all tuxedos and sparkles and tres James Bond, and though I am a dedicated metal/grunge/punk/classic rock fan, I was completely taken by this pop creature from across the pond. It’s not his looks, though I dig the light eyes/dark hair/accent thing going on there, it is the depth of the cynicism and self-hatred in his lyrics. I’m completely fascinated by his music, in a detached, anthropological sort of way. I know next to nothing about him as a person, and I’d really like to keep it that way. Perhaps since I am not exposed to much pop music, I am missing the hordes of self-deprecating, cynical, wickedly funny pop stars out there. Maybe they’re a dime a dozen, I don’t know. I suppose I could give Fergie and Justin Timberlake another listen just to make sure, but why torture myself? There’s no there, there.

When I listen to Robbie, I can’t help thinking that in another life, this guy would have been the penultimate rock star in America. Not a pop star, not the boy band solo act that everyone expects him to be, but a true, honest-to-God, rock star. Maybe he likes pop music, I don’t know, but I hear some substance deep down, behind the obligatory love songs.

Honestly, the husband thinks I’m crazy and has warned me against playing “the bunny song” (so named for the video that was on constant rotation in Sydney not so long ago) in the car or anywhere near his person. I can’t say that I blame him, but I just can’t help myself.

Watching an old episode of The Simpsons (“E. Plurbius Wiggum”), I realized where I’ve heard Barack Obama’s foreign policy before. Ralph Wiggum explains that we can just “use our words” and everyone will play nice with us.

Hope everyone had merry holidays and all that. It’s been absolute chaos here, which goes a long way toward explaining my protracted absence. I suppose I could have posted if I set my mind to it, but perhaps I’m lazy. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been paying attention, however.

Secondly--yeah, huh? Maybe the administration should have heeded the warnings of myriad experts who’d warned time and again that Yemen was a hotbed of extremism. The decision to close Gitmo seems more intelligent every passing day. So wise, so compassionate, so magnanimous is our Dear Leader. (For such impertinence, I suppose I should flog myself and recite ten Our First Lady of All Fashions as penance. The Glorious One is no laughing matter. At least, not to His shining face.)

Finally, how easy it is to forget which came first in the Middle East? It is a region so thoroughly conquered by the legions of Muhammad, that one forgets that Christianity was born there. Awhile back, as I was researching Coptic Christianity, I was struck by the weight of history that rests upon the whole of Christianity. When one thinks of Christianity, one tends to think of American megachurches or the Vatican, when the truth is that it is an Eastern religion. The first missionaries were Jewish. The first churches were in the heart of the Middle East, in northern Africa, in Turkey. Six centuries before the genesis of the violent Muhammad, Christians were worshiping Jesus in Iraq. Since the rise of Islam, their numbers have dwindled as they have been martyred or have fled their homeland. The post linked is a wonderful reminder to keep Iraqi Christians in your prayers this holiday season.

I’ll be back more often now as the chaos winds down up in here. Merry, merry.

My heart is broken: my iPhone died on Christmas. It slipped out of my pocket and hit the corner of something square in the middle of the screen, shattering. The screen is a web of fine, irreversible cracks. I will be waiting in line at the Apple store at 7am tomorrow morning, ready to burst into tears if necessary. I love this phone, more than rationality mandates. I have 120 books on the Kindle app. I have everything, my entire life, on that phone. I don’t even have a back up cheap phone.

Is anything sacred? No kids, no pets, no cars, no electricity, no meat, no breathing–I’m afraid the future involves us sitting around in our dark, dank cave waiting to die. No fire, because not only would we be polluting, we’d be burning the corpses of murdered trees. What a joyless existence! Why do people want to be greenies anyway?

Honestly, what is wrong with these people? My only consolation is that most of them aren’t breeding.

As for me, I’m willing to believe that cats are terrible polluters. Life without dogs is a life worth ending soon. I’m also a big fan of parrots and sugargliders and horses. Animals humanize us, giving us something outside of ourselves to care for. Having something else dependent on us gives us a sense of much-needed responsibility, quite like being a parent. People who don’t like animals are actually subhuman, and should be watched for signs of psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies. You know, Dahmer didn’t like animals either.

Someday, I will get that horse I dreamed of as a young, horse-obsessed girl.

Usually, party switching annoys me because it’s usually a betrayal of one’s constituency, but Parker Griffiths seems to be one of those rare politicians whose principles come before party affiliation. Amazing.

It’s nice to see that there are still politicians who retain a bit of their humanity.

Imagine for a moment that you are a young child and your parents tell you that something wonderful will happen to you over the winter holiday, something that happened to your mother when she was your age. A rite of passage. You love your mother, you think she is the most beautiful woman in the world and you want to be just like her when you grow up. So you’re excited about the coming holiday, anticipating this monumental event on your path to womanhood. When the time comes, however, though the event is set up to look like a party, you’re wondering who this strange person is and why they are asking you to disrobe. It hurts, very badly, searing pain unlike any you have ever experienced and you are terrified. You look to your mother and she refuses to help you. She has told you that she wanted this, told you that this will please God.

What kind of heartless bitch can allow this to happen to her child? Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s account of her own “circumcision” in Infidel and tell me that it is not an evil, barbaric, sick, misogynistic practice. Western feminists complain about the “patriarchy” keeping them down–they wouldn’t know a patriarchy if it slapped them in the face. If only British Muslim schoolgirls only had to worry about a glass ceiling.

Three? Let’s multiply that number exponentially and the mullahs’ story rings true(r).

Meanwhile, the regime can’t quash the spirit of the people. At the funeral of one of the most influential dissident clerics, it became apparent that the Iranian people aren’t giving up on freedom any time soon. Keep holding on, people. I know that my “social justice”-minded president has proven himself a fraud. He doesn’t care about freedom; he’s busy trying to eradicate it in this country.

Fortunately, there are many in this country that are keeping the Iranian people in their prayers. They deserve freedom, and we’ll keep praying that they get it.

me.

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"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful." --CS Lewis--